Chapter 97
JESSICA
I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. Or how long I’m going to pretend I still am.
I shift my weight a little and my body screams. Something in my thigh burns under the bandage–ripped open, re–stitched. I don’t even remember how it happened. I remember teeth. Snapping. Blood. My own voice, feral and not mine.
I close my eyes again, just for a second, just to stop the room from spinning.
It doesn’t help.
The cabin is warm but unfamiliar. Too quiet. Wooden walls, patchy light from the fireplace, no windows big enough to see the sky. It smells like ash, antiseptic, and something vaguely sweet–like apples that are trying too hard. I catalog everything automatically. Where are the exits? How many seconds would it take me to crawl if he-
No. No, stop.
He’s not going to hurt you.
Not this time.
The clatter of the spoon jolts me. I flinch. Subtle, but not enough to go unnoticed. Grayson’s head snaps up. He looks at me, and the second our eyes meet I regret it.
“Y–You’re awake.”
I blink once. That’s the only answer I give him.
He moves like he’s going to come closer. I tense, and he stops.
I try to sit up and immediately regret it. Pain lances through my leg. The bandage pulls. My breath hitches and I hear it, the scrape of the chair legs behind him as he turns around again, fast.
“You’re not supposed to move too fast,” he says, soft.
“I’m fine.” It comes out more like a cough.
“You’re not. His eyes flick to my thigh, to the soaked through edge of the bandage. “You tore the stitches again.”
Of course I did.
Do you want help sitting up?”
I don’t answer. But he wants. He always waits. So I nod, barely, and his hand slips behind my back
flex kam help me up, and hate how good it feels just to lean on something solid How easy it would be to fall back into him, to forget. To prefund is okay between the two of us
pillow befund me and steps
cooked something he says
Say I don’t need anything from him. But my stomach answers before I can, bwisting hard with that hollow, asidic burn that says it’s been too
the great Alpha of the Westwood pack prepare a meal for me turns out to be a great chaotic joke it throw but nothing is normal
1/3
09:40 Tue, 26 Aug
Chapter 97
is going to be normal
soup into a chipped ceramic bowl. It was gentle and a view that made
how can we go back
I’m not mourning in my
don’t have the
63%
+38)
Quiet. Wordless. Me pretending my bones aren’t still vibrating from
together.
Someone else was here.
snapped–no, snarled–my voice already feral before I
Tra
dragging pain behind them. I didn’t care. I could already
to rip
has the
drawls, stepping in like he owns the air.
Sweetheart.
but
that charming right hook,” he mutters, spitting
will gut
is
me, but it’s distant.
slam him against the wall so hard the cabin shudders. His head thuds against the wood.
into his face, breath coming in short, fractured gasps. “You think I don’t
again, this time quieter. “You’re going to have to be more specific,
into his throat. “Say
I’m shaking
lands on my arm–light, but grounding
I snap.
he
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